"No, not Susannah. One of the guests!"
"Was he her lover?" Melvin sounded as if he were about to burst into tears.
"It's not a he, Melvin. It's a woman."
"Oh my God, that's even worse."
"Get a grip on it, Melvin. They weren't lovers, that's for sure. We needed Susannah's room for one of the guests, so she's been staying with me. How soon are you coming out?"
"I'll be right there. In the meantime don't touch the gun or anything else."
"There is no gun, Melvin."
"What? No gun? But you said it was a murder."
"It is, Melvin. Come out and see for yourself."
"An axe then? Or a club? A shovel maybe?"
"Just a quilt, Melvin. Like I said, come out and see for yourself."
"A quilt? I see, strangulation then. The victim was undoubtedly smothered."
"Somehow I don't think so. Come out and see for yourself."
"Then maybe it's not a murder after all. Are you even sure the so-called victim is dead?"
"Melvin, for Pete's sake, just come on out. And call an ambulance."
"Then she isn't dead?"
"Melvin Stoltzfus!"
Melvin showed up in eight minutes flat, just in front of the ambulance staffed by the volunteer rescue squad. Immediately after calling Melvin, I'd called old Doc Shafer. He showed up on the tail of the ambulance, which goes to show you that not all octogenarians putter along at nine miles an hour. If Melvin hadn't been at the head of the procession, he'd have given old Doc a ticket for sure.
Hernia does have a full-time people doctor, but most folks would rather eat a spoonful of the plague than set eyes on
Harold P. Smith Ill's stethoscope. Young Harold is the epitome of arrogance, and I've heard that most dictionaries revived their definition of that word the year following his birth. Even Susannah says she would rather date a poor lawyer than go out with
Harold, so you see what I mean.
Anyway, I'd asked old Doc to come, not for what he might do for the stiff, but for help in controlling Melvin Stoltzfus. It was one of
Doc's patients who kicked Melvin in the head, after all, and it was Doc who undoubtedly patched both of them up. At any rate, everyone in and around Hernia knows and respects old Doc. Doc was my insurance card for getting through the ordeal still sane.
I ushered everyone in and led the way up the stairs to the victim's bedroom. By this time Susannah had returned from the laundry room, without the borax, and was standing by the bed moaning. From within the nether reaches of her blouse Shnookums was following suit with tinny little yowls of his own. I decided that everyone needed a contingent of mourners, even unintentional ones, and to just let them be.
To his professional credit, Melvin appeared to notice the corpse before he noticed Susannah.
"Is this exactly the way you found her?" he asked.
"Naw, she must have gotten up and combed her hair."
"Very funny. Now you and Susannah stand back so I can examine her. This might be rather gruesome."
"No more gruesome than what we can see now," volunteered Doc. "She's been poisoned."
"How the hell do you know that?" snapped Melvin. Quite frankly, I was surprised to hear him swear.
Doc sighed. "Professional instincts, man. Just look at her. It's obvious she died in a great deal of pain, and too quick to call out for help, or to have anyone hear her. Although it's possible, I'd say it's not likely she died of a coronary, given her age."
"How old was she, anyway?" asked Melvin, turning to me.
"Linda is twenty-three."
"Poison then, for sure," said Doc.
"How can you be so sure?" asked Melvin, a little less belligerently.
"Can't be absolutely positive," said Doc, "not until there's been an autopsy. But my best guess is she was poisoned, and at least twelve hours ago. No more than fourteen."
"Twelve hours?" Melvin and I asked at once.
"By the looks of it. Maybe an hour or two more, like I said. Again, the autopsy will take care of that. You, sending her right down to the county coroner?"
For a moment Melvin looked wildly around the room. It was obvious that this was his first solo murder, maybe even his first corpse. Perhaps he expected to see a set of instructions flashed against a wall. "Yes, yes, of course. God, I hope he's back by now." He nodded to the two men who had come with the ambulance. They had remained just outside the door and even now seemed reluctant to cross the threshold. It took a couple of sharp words from Melvin to put them into action.
"Be careful of Mama's quilt," I admonished them. Of course they didn't pay me any attention. They slid the corpse, quilt and all, onto their stretcher. With the very first step he took, one of them stepped on a dragging edge of the quilt, almost pulling the body off with it onto the floor. The quilt pried loose from the clutching hands, but I was sure I heard it rip.
"Now see what you've done!" I said. "I could never make stitches as neat as Mama's." I scooped up the quilt, soiled though it was, and laid it on the bed. That's when I noticed that both on the bed and on the floor, where the quilt had touched down briefly, there was a sprinkling of sunflower seed shells.
"Help me strip the bed," I snapped at Susannah.
"Don't touch a damn thing," said Melvin sharply.
"'Why not?"
"Because you might be disturbing evidence, that's why."
Clearly Melvin Stoltzfus watched too much TV. "There aren't any fingerprints on the sheets, Mel." I started to tug at a comer of the bedding.
"Hello, what's this?" asked Melvin. He reached past me and picked something brown and wrinkled-looking from the bed.
"Oh, it's just a sunflower seed shell," I said as nonchalantly as I could. "Linda ate them all the time."
Melvin hiked his pants up over his hipless pelvis with one hand, and with the other practically shoved the stupid shell up my nose. "Trying to hide evidence, were you, Magdalena?"
"Get a grip on it, Melvin," I said as calmly as I could. "If I were trying to hide evidence, wouldn't I have picked up all the shells before you got here? It's not like they're not obvious, after all. There's a blue jillion of them scattered around."
"Ah, but in 'The Purloined Letter,'" said Melvin pompously, "it was obvious too."
Somehow that rang a bell. I thought back and then remembered my eleventh grade English class, a story by Edgar Allan
Poe, and something about a letter that was hidden by being placed in plain sight. "Melvin," I said slowly, so that he could read my lips if he needed to, "nobody was trying to hide these sunflower seeds. You can't possibly think that they're poisonous. Can you?"
But possibly Melvin did. He got down on his hands and knees and picked up every one of the little shells and deposited them carefully in a small plastic bag he had brought with him.
18
I waited until Melvin was quite done picking up the shells before I spoke again. "Now may I strip the bed?" I asked reasonably.
"Hell, no!" he nearly exploded. "There still may be more evidence."
"Then you strip it yourself when you're done," I said calmly. I grabbed my still-moaning sister by the shoulders and steered her from the room.
Doc hung back a few minutes, then followed me. We headed downstairs to the parlor. "You know this guest well?" he asked.
"What?"
He gestured back at the room, occupied now only by Melvin. "The corpse, I mean. Did you know the lady well when she was alive?"
I shook my head. "Not really. Just two days. All I know about her is that she's a vegetarian, and she was here to protest hunting season. Oh, and if the rumors are true, she's the illegitimate daughter of the Congressman."
"What Congressman?"
"Oops, sorry. Garrett Ream."
"That young fart? Anyway, did you know if she was pregnant?"
"Linda? Pregnant?"
"Just a guess, like everything else, but maybe a good one. Of course we'll have to wait until the autopsy comes back."
I trusted Doc enough not even to bother asking why he suspected Linda was pregnant. But I asked him anyway.
Doc laughed, which, at his age, is likely to come out as a cackle. "Intuition, Magdalena. That and the fact that there was a bottle of prenatal vitamins on her night table. Although it's possible, it isn't likely that anyone who wasn't pregnant would be taking them."
"Well, I'll be. Linda pregnant. But if that moron in there sees the pills, he's liable to think she tried to commit suicide."
"By swallowing vitamins?"
I reminded Doc about Melvin's experience with the bull. The more I think about it, the more I'm sure even Melvin Stoltzfus couldn't be that dumb. But then again, you have to be pretty stupid to get a story like that started in the first place.
Old Doc laughed until I thought he would have a coronary. "Unfortunately I don't remember such an episode. But if it did happen, I'm sure Melvin was the one involved. Here," he reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle of vitamins. "Even
Melvin can't misinterpret these if he doesn't see them, Magdalena. I nabbed them when the fool was picking up all those sunflower seeds. No point in allowing him to muddy up the waters prematurely."
"But Doc! Isn't that illegal? Swiping evidence?"
"What evidence? No one is going to believe this young lady tried to kill herself by overdosing on a bottle of vitamins. No one, that is, except for young Melvin, who will eventually see the light anyway. So actually, I'm just speeding up the time it will take him to separate the evidence from the incidental. Incidentally, did you happen to notice that the 'do not disturb' sign on the door was still facing out?"
"What 'do not disturb' sign? We don't use those signs I around here."
"Yes, you do. Red letters, on a white background. About this big. Saw it myself. Plain as day."
"Well, it isn't ours." I shook Susannah gently. "Did you notice a sign on the door when you first went; in there?"
Susannah burst into tears and threw her arms' around me. I hate it when someone does that. Even my own sister. My personal space is very important to me. Of course, Susannah didn't notice my discomfort. "I shouldn't have gone in there," she wailed. "I should have started mopping right away, just like you said."
"Nonsense," I said comfortingly. "Your going after Shnookums's binky had nothing to do with Linda's death. Now was there, or was there not, a 'do not disturb' sign hanging on the door?"
Susannah nodded. "There was, Mags. But I swear I knocked first, before opening the door. I knocked real softly, too. I mean, I wouldn't have gone in at all if there had been any kind of an answer."
"Well, how do you like that? A bogus sign. You don't suppose the killer - "
"Put the sign on the door so that no one would discover the young lady's death for a long time, thereby giving him or herself extra time to get away?" old Doc finished for me.
"Does that mean that whenever the guests come back from the woods this afternoon, Mags, the killer will be the only one not to show up?" asked Susannah, with surprising sensibility.
"Yeah, something like that."
"Not necessarily, and probably not at all," said old Doc.
"But you said - "
"I suggested it as a possibility, but 1 don't think it's at all likely. This killer's too smart to let him or herself be identified by their absence. My guess is that whoever killed this young lady is pretty confident and plans to wait things out."
"But then, why leave the sign?" "That was just to make sure the poison had a chance to run its course before the victim was discovered. Even if the victim did make some noise, a sign on the door would probably keep people away. At least for a while. Most people are reluctant to investigate even very loud noises when there are 'do not disturb' signs on the doors." I swear the old coot winked at me then.
Susannah laughed, far too bawdily. "You can say that again."
I trust I didn't blush. "Care for anything to eat?"
"Would I ever!" said Doc. He did, after all, live to eat. "But only if you make it from scratch. Who knows what the leftovers in your fridge contain."
I laughed nervously. "Actually, there are no leftovers. At least from last night. Billy Dee, that's one of the guests, said he and Lydia Ream, the Congressman's wife, pitched everything out when the meal was over. They're the ones who did the cleanup," I explained.
Old Doc looked suddenly serious. "That might be your evidence, right there."